£50m of Cocaine seized on private Jet
 

News from FAB......anyone recognise the aircraft involved?...or the crew?

Five held in £50m cocaine seizure at Farnborough Airport - BBC News

First call would be to the handler/FBO at the Bogota end - which one dispatched this flight - Aerosupport, Helistar, Central Charter de Columbia/Signature, Private Flight etc.?

That photograph on the BBC would seem to indicate Tyrolean Jet Service's GLEX (IE-IEL)

Bogota to the UK. Hmm...I wonder how that possibly raised a few flags...

http://www.tjs.at/fileadmin/user_upl...XPRESS_1_A.pdf



Yes, OE-IEL with the TJS and Swarovski logos on each side of the door.

What a contrast! First 10 hours of luxury inside that plane (including those two Tyrolean cabin attendants) and now 10 years in the Tower of London...

http://www.medievalists.net/wp-conte...hm_dungeon.jpg
Luckily they released the crew. Could have been different in other countries.

Was certainly interesting being at FAB yesterday. I counted 7 police vehicles in the car park at one point..

From BBC story"

"The crew of the plane were also questioned but were released without charge."

Crew must have been very convincing.

OE-IEL flew FAB-INN this afternoon.

Anyone remember the German (Austrian?) crew that left Venezuela sans flight plan and were arrested in Canaries? Evidently, the crew was innocent as some family members wer3 threatened.

GF

Yes, I do. The crew spent quite a long time in investigative custody.

I'm very surprised the crew were not suspicious about the weight (and number) of bags loaded onboard and the fact hey were in "Colombia".

Maybe they tipped off authorities in the UK prior to their arrival?

........if they did good on them, but they will spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulder!

From the BBC.....

Martin and Stephen Neil, aged 48 and 53, from Poole in Dorset, have been charged with importing cocaine.

An Italian man and two Spanish men were also charged with the same offence.

The brothers, from Bournemouth Road in Poole, along with Italian national Alessandro Iembo, 28, and Spanish nationals Victor Franco-Lorenzo, 40, and Jose Ramon Miguelez-Botas, 45, are due to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court later.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) said tape-wrapped packages containing the drugs were found in 15 items of luggage taken from the private jet. The seizure was described as one of the largest flown into the UK "for many years".

15 bags for 5 people... this is a kind of normal load...

I had 42 for one person....

Ha, people used to hire that jet hoping they might find a few Swarovski crystals behind the sofa, now it's got some real provenance, could be all sorts stuck in those seats now... charter rate's just gone up

When General Noriega got the push his personal Super Puma ended up on the North Sea complete with tinted cockpit and cabin windows.
We used to brief the passengers that if they found any little white bags hidden away they were to pass them up to the crew

Wonder who the broker was, and if they booked online :E

What difference would booking online make? I don't know of any brokers who inspect the passenger's luggage before a flight. :ugh:

Note that handling is not compulsory in Bogota airport, but presumably Tyrolean, as a well-respected operator, went through one of the three 'proper' FBOs there. Question is, do outbound, public transport, chartered jets have to go through screening there (as they do in Europe over 10 tonnes), if so, clearly the screening staff were paid off by someone there, or it didn't go through any form of screening at all, legitimately. Colombian police should be all over that FBO/handler like a bad rash. If not, then the airport police are in it, the screening staff in it, etc. etc.